


Shore Leave: A Coda

by Ghostery



Series: Jim + Tilly Friendship [6]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Blink And You Miss It Slash, Fights, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Revenge, Shore Leave, Three-Dimensional Chess (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostery/pseuds/Ghostery
Summary: A shadow fell over Jim’s face. He slowly opened one eye. He wasn’t sure he’d like what he’d see.“What do you think I should know, Jim?” Tilly said, sitting cross-legged next to him.Jim looked over at not-exactly-his-friend Tilly in awe. Just like everyone and everything else, the inhabitants had perfectly recreated her. It really wasn’t fair.“Well?” Tilly asked, looking down at him.“I beat up Finnegan.”---Follow up to Anything for a Friend. I found a way to make it work.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captainThotiana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainThotiana/gifts).



> Takes place during and after the TOS Episode Shore Leave and with a little bit of Star Trek III at the end.  
> Also, it'd be good to keep in mind that TNG had those random 50+ year-old ensigns.  
> Shore Leave is such a gift too. There's that backrub scene at the beginning and then the Alice in Wonderland scene. It also gave me a way to put Tilly in this. It's great.

Spock watched as Jim battled with an impossibility. There was simply no way that Sean Finnegan would or could be here, especially not in a cadet’s uniform. Spock hadn’t heard from him since they’d left on different assignments, but he knew that the man had graduated with him and was not on the Enterprise.

While Spock had not been well acquainted with Finnegan, his roommate had been. During their final year at the Academy, there had been a lot of grumbling about a couple of new cadets. Spock couldn’t understand the appeal or the effort that went into the whole ordeal. Finnegan had always been a prankster and Humans were prone to forming ill-suited romantic liaisons, but this had been slightly more interesting than the usual case. Finnegan had taken to pranking the significant other, or so he had thought, of the person he was interested in. An obviously flawed strategy. He’d then taken to trying to woo the young woman with trinkets, gifts, and conversation, but she’d been so skittish at that point it had backfired rather spectacularly.

Now, Spock was watching Jim fight a likely simulacrum of Finnegan who was jeering at him most emphatically. He calculated. Jim would be about the right age to have been a first-year cadet when he and Finnegan were in their final year. Also, as Spock had learned a few weeks earlier, Jim had a close female friend at that time.

He’d need more information, but it was a distinct possibility that Jim and his friend had been the two plebes that Finnegan had tormented.

With this in mind, Spock watched with a curious satisfaction as Jim laid the simulacrum out cold with a punch.

* * *

Jim sat back on the grass by the edge of a lake, looking out over the remarkably clear water. He knew, that if he looked, fish would suddenly appear in there, but he didn’t particularly care about that right now. He laid back in the grass and looked at the clouds until he grew bored and shut his eyes. It was nice just to lay in the sunshine for a while after everything that had happened this past couple of days of shore leave.

It had been wonderful seeing Ruth, but it also made him a little melancholy. It hadn’t worked out between them. It never would have and playing pretend about what might have been… Well, it wasn’t real. He’d always wanted something real. He then made a concerted effort not to think about anyone else he’d tried to have something real with. There were some people that should not be plucked out of his head by the caretakers of this place.

So, he thought about Finnegan. That had been spectacular. He’d really felt like he’d finally gotten one over on that guy. It was almost unfair, really. Jim had looked Finnegan up on a whim when he’d gone back up to the ship to take care of some necessities. The man was still an ensign. Jim couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. If only Tilly knew.

A shadow fell over Jim’s face. He slowly opened one eye. He wasn’t sure he’d like what he’d see.

“What do you think I should know, Jim?” Tilly asked, sitting cross-legged next to him.

Jim looked over at not-exactly-his-friend Tilly in awe. Just like everyone and everything else, the inhabitants had perfectly recreated her. It really wasn’t fair.

“Well?” Tilly asked, looking down at him.

“I beat up Finnegan.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but not the real one, just a re-creation.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I mean, you could get court-martialed for beating up the real McCoy.”

Jim blew out a breath. He still remembers Bones, dead on the ground, felled by a knight’s lance. 

“What’d I say?”

“I actually know a McCoy now, Tilly.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. She stretched out next to him on the grass. “I wonder how much of this stuff I’ll have to pull out of my hair later.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll help.”

“You’re a good friend, Jim. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, Tilly.” He stretched out his arm and took her hand. She squeezed gently, then moved so that her head was on his shoulder. He pressed his cheek onto the top of her head. They’d even gotten the smell of her hair right.

“That cloud,” Tilly declared pointing at the sky, “looks like your dad’s old sailboat.”

Jim squinted, he could just about see what she meant.

“Well, that one,” Jim said pointing at a different cloud, “looks like that poor dog your sister named Archibald.”

“Step-sister, but yeah, you’re not wrong. Wait a minute, you’re a captain?”

She’d seen the bands around the bottom of his sleeve, he realized.

“Yeah, I am. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.”

She turned her head and looked at him, “I’m proud of you though, one of us had to get there first. I wish it were me, I mean I was the youngest person to be accepted to the CTP.”

“Only because you were born later in the year.”

She sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Okay, is it just me or did the dog morph into a mushroom?”

“Nope, the sailboat has also turned into a starship. See? There’s the saucer, drive section, and nacelles.”

“Fanciful, but I’ll allow it.” It was just like old times before she’d gone out of his life.

Jim realized he kind of hated this place, none of it being real was a terrible double-edged sword.

* * *

After their turn on the Bridge, Spock and Jim played chess in Jim’s quarters. They hadn’t seen much of each other during the shore leave. Mostly because Spock had refused to take any shore leave. Honestly, Jim couldn’t entirely blame him. He certainly had enjoyed most of his time on the planet and felt refreshed, but there was also sadness. He hoped none of the crew were as plagued with it as he was. It rather defeated the purpose.

“Jim, I must tell you something,” Spock said, moving one of his pieces on the board.

“What would that be, Spock?” Jim said, still considering his move.

“I knew Finnegan at the Academy.”

Jim looked up from the board and straight into Spock’s eyes. “You did?”

“Yes. We were acquaintances. We had several people in common, though only one of them I would consider a friend of mine.”

“What’d you make of him?” Jim asked as he took his move.

Spock frowned. Jim was winning this game so far. “I am sure he had positive traits. I just don’t know where he kept them.”

“That is a most accurate assessment, Mr. Spock.”

“Why, thank you, Captain,” Spock said, moving a piece on the board. “Check.”

“Finnegan just about drove me up a wall that year. I actually showed up to a cadet review wet and with a fresh cut over my eye, due to one of his pranks. Then Tilly, well, she told Finnegan to knock it off. He stopped messing with me, but I’d have rather that than him stalking her for a couple of months. He’d wait till she was alone and get in her face and try to talk to her. Now, Tilly could be a nervous person. She was a compassionate person. She was also a decisive and occasionally vindictive person. At one point, she bugged out the food slots so all Finnegan could order was a banana split flavored emergency ration. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, they’ve since discontinued it.

“No, I am not.”

“I grew up a Starfleet brat and Tilly had a dad in Starfleet and a diplomat for a mother, so we both logged a lot of time on ships from a young age. Now, as you know, sometimes the best you can hope for to eat is a ration bar or drink and there always seemed to be an abundance of that one, mainly because no one wanted to drink it.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think Finnegan ever figured out what happened to the food slots.” Jim shook his head. “Eventually he started leaving her things. Flowers, a snow globe, notes, that type of thing. She got very creeped out by it. It was one of the worst executions of such a strategy I’ve ever seen, much like your last move.”

“That was rather uncalled for, Jim. I believe she ended up recording him admitting to everything. I heard that the morning it happened. Finnegan lamented that she ran to you and she had probably been in a romantic relationship with you all along.”

“Well, he was half right. I did get an arm full of crying Tilly that morning. I just helped her calm down and then we went out and got breakfast. No, Tilly and I never dated or anything. I think we might have kissed once or twice. If I recall correctly we were dared to at a party, not sure now. We must have been very drunk. Once I even had a bit of a breakdown because I thought she had fallen in love with me. It was a big misunderstanding and it turned out she’d been happily dating someone else the whole time. On balance though, if she showed up right now and I absolutely had to kiss someone immediately, I’d probably end up kissing you. You’d likely complain less afterward. Check and mate,” Kirk finished, capturing Spock’s king.

Spock stared at the board in disbelief because it was better than looking at Jim right now. That was more information than he’d ever counted on getting and not just about the odd… love triangle, he thought it was called, that had existed only in Finnegan’s head after all.

He thought about the bubbly and nervous Ensign his sister had roomed with, which was how Michael had described her to him initially because it was superior to the other thoughts he could be having.

Had Jim really just…

From what he’d witnessed and heard about her, he could believe every word. She’d been outwardly friendly and polite to him for most of the time he'd been there, but she’d also been incredibly closed off for ninety-five percent of his time on board, until it had been made clear to Tilly that he loved his sister, despite everything. Her reaction in Engineering to the Essof IV plan had been something he’d never forget.

She was sweet and pleading with his sister, asking her if there was any other way, begging her to find an alternative, and trying to make suggestions. She was all cold fury toward him, pointing out all the things that could go wrong even some that they hadn’t thought of themselves, and she’d been able to turn between the two on the metaphorical dime.

Somebody had remarked later that she was channeling ‘Captain Killy’, but Michael had said that it all came from a place of love and loyalty. It must have been Commander Saru who’d made the initial remark. Spock wasn’t sure what he had meant even now.

Even still, it had paled in comparison to the treatment he had received immediately after Essof IV. She was somewhere beyond fury then. After that, it had taken him being willing to sacrifice everything Tilly had been willing to sacrifice for Michael to begin to mend fences.

However, it made sense that Jim would be friends with such a person. After all, Doctor McCoy could pull the same trick of changing his disposition, though Tilly managed it with fewer ad hominem attacks.

“You okay over there Spock? Do you want to play another game?” Jim asked.

Spock seized on the opportunity. “I am fine, but no thank you. I should retire to my quarters, it’s getting late.”

“You just don’t want to lose again, but I understand.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “That is not the case.”

“It was a joke, which you are in no mood for. I see that now.”

“Quite. I shall see you at the morning briefing, provided nothing happens before then.”

“Right, right. Let’s all hope that we can have a quiet first night after shore leave for once. Good night, Spock,” Jim said as he watched Spock leave.

“Good night, Jim.” The doors closed behind him.

Jim put his head in his hands. He couldn’t even blame the damn mind reading caretakers this time.

* * *

Leonard McCoy and Spock both looked up at the man walking toward their cell, but only one of them recognized him.

“Hello, there Doctor, I’m just bringing you something to eat and some medication, just like they gave you earlier. Sorry it’s only a ration bar, but I can’t let you have any utensils,” the man that Spock recognized as Sean Finnegan said. Spock noted he was only a lieutenant.

“And who might you be?” Doctor McCoy asked because it was polite, but also for some sort of confirmation he didn’t exactly understand.

“Lieutenant Sean Finnegan,” he said as he let down the force field, stepped into the cell, and passed the ration bar to McCoy.

Spock laid the wrapped bar on the bunk beside him. “Tell me, do you remember a Sylvia Tilly?”

Finnegan’s eyebrows furrowed. “Sounds familiar. Why?”

“Then you must remember being acquainted with Jim Kirk.”

“Him? Yeah, I met him at the Academy. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone in Starfleet who wouldn’t recognize his name. You served with him, right?”

“Do you remember what you did to them?”

“What?”

“All those years ago?”

“I have n…” Realization dawned as evidenced by Finnegan’s jaw going slack.

“Kirk mentioned that?”

“He didn’t have to,” Spock replied.

Ordinarily, he would have never taken his next actions, but even when he was in control, he could feel McCoy’s impulses and, for once, he didn’t want to fight them.

Finnegan was still over by the opening to the cell. Spock stood up quickly and was in front of him before Finnegan could process it. He’d fallen down in his sparring practice and this wasn’t his stronger, taller, and more resilient body. There were still some things he could do.

He struck Finnegan in the stomach causing him to fold over and brought his elbow down on the man’s upper back, but before he could fall, pulled him back upright by his collar and caught him with a fist square in the face. Finnegan toppled backward out of the cell where he scrambled to the security desk and raised the forcefield.

“That’s for my friends—“

“—you son of a bitch,” McCoy finished, not entirely sure what just happened or why he’d said that. He tilted his head. That Finnegan man was bleeding from his mouth and nose.

“You need medical attention,” he stated. “I suggest you find a doctor who isn’t locked up in one of these.” He gestured at the cell walls around him, before sitting back down on the bunk. He noticed that there was a ration bar next to him and it was one of the better flavors. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.

As he ate, he hoped like hell that when this was over, someone would be able to explain everything to him, especially why he was aching so badly in his head and now his arm.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy finds out what happened with Finnegan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fixed it.

“Jim,” McCoy gestured for him to come over to the Bridge’s science station. Jim got up and walked over to him.

“What’s wrong?” Jim asked.

“I think I punched a guy when he brought food to my cell. My hand’s swelling a little and my elbow’s mighty sore. Also, he was bleeding. I busted his lip and he likely cut his lip on his teeth and I may have broken his nose. I called him a ‘son of a bitch’ and, unlike Spock, I don’t even know what for.”

“Oh? That doesn’t really sound like you… or Spock. Now, why would either of you do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen the guy before in my life.”

“Bones, you can’t seriously be suggesting th—”

“That Spock used my body to punch someone? Sounds about as reasonable as everything else since he knocked me out and forced his Katra into my skull without even so much as a ‘by your leave’, might I add.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do Bones. He’s in your head. Unless you can rustle him up, I can’t ask him any questions.”

“Admiral, we’re coming up to the Genesis sector,” Sulu interrupted.

“Drop out of warp when we enter the sector,” Jim ordered.

“Aye, sir.”

“We’ll talk about this later, Bones,” Jim said, heading back to his chair.

 

* * *

 

As Doctor McCoy sat in the shuttle Starfleet had dispatched to fish them out of the bay, still cold and soaking wet, he reflected. They’d spent just over three months on Vulcan and, with everything else going on, it had never seemed to be the right time to ask about the Finnegan incident. He’d have to soon, though. They were going to have to stand trial. Who knew where they’d be sent after that. If he was ever going to get an answer, it would have to be soon. But first, he wanted some dry clothes. He shifted his feet and his socks squelched unpleasantly in his shoes. Make that clean dry clothes, a hot shower, and a lot of towels.

 

* * *

 

“Bones, what are you doing here?” Jim asked as he opened the door to his apartment.

“I made bail, same as you” he quipped. The old system of cash bail had gone the way of the dodo, but they were being monitored as flight risks until their trial. “Is Spock hiding in here with you too?” He added, looking over Jim’s shoulder.

“I wouldn’t say he’s hiding. He’s just sitting on my couch,” Jim said, moving out of the way, so he could come in.

He took a seat opposite Spock and Jim took the one next to Spock on the couch. “Hello Spock.”

“Doctor.”

“I’d like you to explain one thing to me.”

“Only one?” Spock asked, raising an eyebrow. Jim sat back on the couch, crossing his arms with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Fine, let him settle in to watch the show.

Jim did at that, crossing one leg over the other, his knee bumping Spock’s as he did it. His eyes pinged back and forth between them as they talked.

“For now,” he allowed. “Why did you attack that guard in the holding cell when you were in my body?”

“Those were your impulses, Doctor, not mine.”

“You’re blaming me for this? I didn’t even know what was happening until I was calling the guy a son of a bitch and even that wasn’t my idea.” He couldn’t believe Spock, except he absolutely could.

“So, who was the guy?” Jim asked. Jim looked at him first and then Spock. “Well?”

Spock didn’t answer.

“Something Finnegan. He was a lieutenant, I think. Mid-fifties, if I had to guess. He’d just brought me something to eat and another sedative.”

“Finnegan? Surely not…” Jim looked at Spock and Spock looked back. Something passed between them and right by him. ”Oh, Spock. You didn’t have to do that,” Jim said, sitting up then twisting to more easily face Spock, and putting a hand on Spock’s forearm near his elbow.

“I am aware of that, Jim.”

The atmosphere in the room had changed and he still didn’t have a clue why that would be. “Why’s it got all mushy in here, all of a sudden? Will one of you just explain this all to me?”

“It’s a long story Bones, all the way back to when I was in the Academy.”

“As was I, along with Sean Finnegan,” Spock added.

“Well, go on, I’ve got time.”

They explained the whole tale. How awful Finnegan had been. How Spock had known what was happening, in general terms. How Jim’s friend Tilly had put Finnegan in his place. He wished like anything he had managed to meet her, she sounded like a real firecracker. He said as much and even Spock agreed. Spock talked a little, very little, about the time he’d spent on the same ship as her. They’d had a somewhat reluctant friendship. He liked her even more for that.

“The last time I saw Finnegan,” Jim explained, “was on that planet we took shore leave on, the one where the caretakers created things from what they pulled out of our heads. Remember? I always wanted to knock the stuffing out of Finnegan… well, I would have held him down while Tilly did it, but she rejected both of those plans. She didn’t want me to get expelled. So, I finally got to lay him out cold on that planet.”

“That was a simulacrum, Jim,” Spock said.

“That was good enough for me, truly. So, why’d you do it, Spock?”

“You and Tilly are,” Spock tilted his head considering, “friends of mine. My intention at the time was only to confront him, finally, about what he did. However, Doctor McCoy’s impulses were to lash out physically. I simply did not object enough to overrule them.”

“I still don’t believe you’re claiming that was my idea. I heal people. I don’t generally put them in the infirmary. I get them out of the infirmary,” he said.

“You’re a doctor, not a fighter?” Jim asked with a chuckle, without looking away from Spock.

“Exactly,” he said, noticing with clinical detachment Jim’s hand had moved down Spock’s arm almost to the wrist. When Spock flipped his hand over and Jim pressed two fingers into the palm, McCoy knew he should go. They were no longer in the mood for conversation with him. He could get persnickety with them about it but with the trial tomorrow… “Well, that was all I wanted to know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be spending my last night as a free man sleeping alone in my own bed.”

“See you tomorrow, Bones.”

“Good night, Doctor.”

“I guess I’ll just see myself out,” he muttered with a roll of his eyes. He got up and went home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this put me over 50k words in the drafts folder of the project file I have for this whole series and the stuff adjacent to it. That's pretty wild to me. If it were all one continuous novel and the last day in November, I would have won Nanowrimo.  
> Anyway, I hoped you liked this.  
> Feedback is appreciated.  
> [My tumblr](https://bitterific.tumblr.com)


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